This is why Flashpoint only lasted one episode on The CW's Flash series

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Most of the offseason was spent building buzz for Flashpoint, but the huge Flash story didn’t last very long in execution. So why not?

Series producer Todd Helbing said they decided to wrap up the Flashpoint storyline (or at least the part of it featuring the actual alternate universe) in the season premiere because they didn’t want to spend too much time spinning their wheels in this universe — and it also didn’t help that TV Flashpoint had to be a bit smaller in scale than its comic counterpart (since you can’t exactly stage a world war between Aquaman and Wonder Woman on The CW).

"I think anytime you do a story like Flashpoint, something as iconic as that, with the character restrictions that we had, it's going to be different than everybody expected. I think for us from a story point, when we talked about it originally it was going to be more episodes but what happens more often than not is that when you break the story you find that it would be a lot better and a lot more satisfying if you pulled up a lot of that information and put it in that first episode....It just became a much stronger episode if we just made it one as opposed to four or five, and then we could really kickstart the rest of the season after that. But Flashpoint or not, there are consequences going forward for Barry for what he did and those ripples he's going to explore throughout the third season.”

Helbing’s points certainly make a lot of sense, though you have to wonder if they could’ve at least spent an opening two-parter in Flashpoint to give it a bit more room to breathe.